You’ve got to remember the Cold War was a very real thing then, so the relationship with the United States was very, very important.
BOB HAWKEBill Heseltine had been at university with me, at the University of Western Australia. I knew him well.
More Bob Hawke Quotes
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And that’s what brought the regime down. The last South African Finance Minister, Barend du Plessis, went on record as saying that it was the investment sanctions that put the final nail in the coffin of apartheid.
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I had no time for Indira Gandhi. She was too much in the Russian camp for my liking.
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I respected [Margaret Thatcher] enormously. She had great integrity in that respect.
BOB HAWKE -
I believe [ Rajiv Gandhi] had a real sense that he would be assassinated.
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It was a remarkable relationship. Margaret [Thatcher] and I had a love/hate relationship. She was always defending the South African regime and we had some terrible fights, including an enormous one in Canada.
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And it did seem to me that one way that we could bring the apartheid regime down would be if we did mount an effective investment sanction.
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I said to my people, “We’re knocking apartheid off but we’ve got to be prepared to assist them.” And I sent senior people over there to assist the incoming South African regime to go about the economic plan.
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It had things that it could do and which I thought were worthwhile: one would be South Africa, of course. And, as I said, I assumed a leadership role within the Commonwealth on that.
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There is a reciprocal respect for [ Elizabeth II], for her interest in the Commonwealth. The members of the Commonwealth recognise that here is a genuine interest from the top. So, that’s one reason. I’m not putting it necessarily in order of importance.
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I rang my friend Jim Wolfensohn, who was then running a private commercial bank in New York. I said, “Come up to Vancouver”, and he did. I put my proposition to him. He said, “I think it could work.”
BOB HAWKE -
The personality of the Queen [ Elizabeth II]… For instance, once she goes – if she’s ever going to die, it seems to be questionable – if Charles [of Wales] were there, whether there’d be the same sort of cement is very questionable, I think.
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I had a good personal relationship with Lee Kuan Yew and I used him, in the sense, that he… He made a statement in 1980, and he said in that statement that,
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An assumption cannot be used to justify making second-class citizens of those who are unfortunate enough to constitute living proof of the inaccuracy of that assumption.
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It was very much an Australian/New Zealand initiative to have a nuclear free South Pacific. And the Americans were very apprehensive about this.
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George Bush Junior [George W Bush] was a religious fanatic, and Tony Blair wasn’t far behind in a way.
BOB HAWKE






